to not understand why Christians think Jesus died for our sins?

[switcheroooo]

If Jesus died for everyone's sins, does that mean people are not accountable for their actions? You can kill people, steal and lie but have a protected status because Jesus died for your sins.

How does this work? Why are people not responsible for their own sins? Where is the justice?

I am agnostic…

I think you’ll find Christianity is rather keen on the concept of true repentance.

Christians believe that if you're truly sorry (truly involves changed behaviour) God will forgive you and you can live in heaven. I guess this is meant to help with rehabilitation /people changing and becoming better as otherwise if you commit one sin you might think 'ah well I'm off to hell anyway, might as well enjoy myself while I'm on earth and do whatever I want from now on'

Committing a horrible crime with the plan to 'say sorry' later isn't being truly sorry.

I’m a dedicated atheist but raised Catholic and will try to answer seriously.

Every is still responsible for their sins. You kill someone, steal and lie, you go to hell. However, if you kill someone, steal and lie, and later HONESTLY regret it and confess it, it’s forgiven.

The “sin” that Jesus died for was the original sin, which everyone is born with. It is a remnant everyone carries of the fact that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge. Before Jesus died, everyone who hd lived a righteous life and deserved to go to Heaven had to wait in Purgatory until this sin was forgiven. After, this sin is cleansed by baptism.

So, it’s not quite as simple as you say, that everyone’s sins are automatically forgiven. However, there is still a lot in the above story that is really problematic:

1. The idea that desiring knowledge is such a bad sin it deserves all descendants forever to suffer;
2. The idea that we are born dirty and sinful and need to be cleansed by baptism;
3. The idea that a baby who dies at birth will not be admitted into Heaven as they are unbaptised;
4. The vast amount of money the Church has extracted from grieving relatives over centuries, for candles, prayers, and sin forgiveness for their dead relatives who might be helped out of Purgatory by a priests for a suitable donation.

There might be differences if you’re talking about Anglican, Orthodox, Protestant etc versions.

I did an access course in Christian Theology years ago before going on to my degree in a different humanities course. This is my understanding of this... The sin of Adam and Eve was so great that the chasm created between them and God could not be breached by any human, but it was a human that needed to be able to fix it. No humans at this point could go to Heaven. God still loved humans and wanted to be able to fix it, and so He sent Jesus who is wholly human and wholly God as a sacrifice to fix that chasm. Humans can now go to Heaven according to their own actions. I hope I've remembered correctly.

Does Jesus dying for people’s sins only really apply to Christians though? And if you set out to kill/steal/lie etc, then you’re not behaving in a Christian manner, so it wouldn’t apply to you.

(caveat: I’m a born & bred atheist so may be completely wrong)

I agree OP, you'd think Christians would be more craic with Jesus taking the rap for their sins.

I thought God sacrificed his own son to stop people from performing animal sacrifices to him or some such.

Because ultimately God is a vengeful autocratic bastard.

It's obviously nonsense, but from Christian perspective, repentance and asking for forgiveness is important. You are supposed to try and live as Christ lived. It's not a free pass to do as you please. You would need to be honestly remorseful as well. Christianity also prescribes to the idea we are born sinful (this is what original sin is), but this would mean unbaptised babies don't go to heaven, but for me that is incompatible with a supposedly all loving God. Like, theoretically, a school shooter who is genuinely repentant can go to heaven, but not a baby?

I'm a die hard Atheist, and my main issues are:

1. I personally think a God that apparently knows all there ever is or was is incompatible with free will. God would have foreseen Eve's betrayal, but went ahead and created her anyway. God will know who is going to believe, but punishes non-believers anyway.

2. Why create humans just to worship you? Especially knowing not all of them will, but then being mad about it anyway.

3. Suffering is a huge theological question and I've never heard anyone produce a sufficient answer as to why God lets so much suffering happen.

4. God is all loving? People should read the old testament. He's a wrathful tyrant. Also, Jesus is known for kindness to hated people like tax collectors and prostitutes, but we're expected to believe it's okay to be homophobic etc

5. Christianity is inherently misogynistic and has A LOT to answer for in terms of women's subjugation through history. We only need to look at US abortion laws to see that Christianity still has a significant impact on women.

If science could prove the existence of a creator, cool. But there is no way a Christian God exists.

I am still trying to work how Joseph did not start a thread on MN

It's ultimately such an ancient form of thought that it does strike really oddly now. Jesus as literally the sacrificial lamb, the child sacrifice of an apparently loving father, the ultimate gift. When I used to go to synagogue and they tried to parse out the story of Abraham and Isaac and make it sound understandable, it was no more convincing than it was in church. I suppose it is always shocking to think that any parent would slaughter a child to prove their obedience/use their blood to wash clean the world's sins/any other reason. And that people would then write that story to promote a religion.

I accept that millions of people all over the world find it meaningful, but I stopped doing so long ago.

Oh look , it’s the annual Let’s Insult The Christians on their most holy Day’ thread !

I hope the OP puts one up for Eid next year.

I’ve never really understood the timeline?

If God was the first ever Being and created the earth, why did he put dinosaurs on it? And if Adam and Eve were the first humans, why did they not appear for millions of years after the dinosaur era?

And how long after God created Adam and Eve and humans began to populate the earth did Jesus come along?

And all the people who died before Jesus came on the scene, what happened to them if there was no concept of Heaven and Hell at the point they died?

Do religious people not believe in evolution?

Which goes back to the point of why dinosaurs were the first creatures to inhabit the earth and what was God’s role in all of it?

It baffles me and I would love it explained to me.

Wait what, all those bits on the Old testament where people were doing gods will, and no one was going to heaven? And He never mentioned this till Jesus? wtf?!

To explain it you need to understand that there are a whole bunch of spiritual laws at play that our society no longer has a place for so people are disconnected from them. Basically people are responsible for their sins, but the sacrifice of Jesus removes the spiritual burden of them for those who ask. I’ve also heard it described as Jesus freeing people from karmic debt.

Atonement for sins or rituals to cleanse spiritually can be found across many, probably all religions, the sacrifice of Jesus is the one followed by Christians. If you don’t believe in a spiritual dimension then your sins are just crimes punished by the courts or through fines. If you do believe in a spiritual realm then your sins are something you need to account for or reckon with on a spiritual level and Jesus has said his sacrifice takes this reckoning from us and puts it on Him but we have to ask.
I hope I’ve explained some of it. I’m a fairly new Christian and the sacrifice of Jesus is something I didn’t immediately understand either.

So you’d like the people of MN to summarise 2000 years of theology for you? You won’t get that from me. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool atheist.

I think Jesus is a sort-of contingent safety net. He died so that our sins will be forgiven but only if we also <something something something> where <something something something> is whatever the priest or king thinks will result in a compliant congregation.

But, looking for logic in theology?

I would just let Christians put themselves through the mental gymnastics involved in Jesus dying for everyone’s sins. I grew up in a devout household, and realising in my teens that, no longer did I not believe it, I’d never believed it, and that stopping even trying or pretending to try was a relief— apologetics is like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty from Through the Looking Glass, trying to believe three impossible things before breakfast.

I believe in God. I believe if we all followed Jesus’ teaching to love our neighbours the world would be a better place. I don’t believe everything the church tells us, for example, I don’t believe babies can’t get into heaven if they aren’t christened. I’m sure someone more knowledgeable than me on the sin subject will be along shortly. I wish you all happiness and peace.

Ok that makes sense. It is not just do whatever you want with no consequences.

So it's fine to insult Christians on their most holy day rightho!

Love how to see how that pans out for Muslims at Eid, Jews at Passover and Hindus at Diwali.

No wonder Reform is gaining traction.

It’s always fine to say you disagree with something and not believe.

This is the bit I don’t really get. If god is all powerful and wants the breach closed, why didn’t he just close it/decide to forgive sins? Why was the sacrifice of Jesus necessary- surely god could have just sorted it all out without any need for Jesus’ sacrifice?

I was raised Christian and remember saying when I was quite young that if god was all seeing, all knowing and all powerful, then he must have always been able to forgive sins and just chose not to. So Jesus needing to die for our sins seemed like an extra layer of complexity that made the story difficult to believe because it seemed illogical. I really wanted an answer to this because I’d been quite devout up until this point, but I was told that I was being ‘difficult.’

I live in a family that proports to be Christian. There are two priests in the extended family. All the family are deathly silent on the incest and carpet sweeping of incest that has gone on in my family.

One of the priests advised his brother (both my uncles) who rang him up to seek his counsel on the issue to never mention the abuse to keep the family relationships smooth. In his view (the priest) the abuse is solely the abusers issue and there is no context to why it happened but that simply is not true my parents have deep seated issues themselves and are my brothers prime enablers. When I called out my uncle on his behaviour of advocating for carpet sweeping he completely cut me off. Childlike hypocrites who have neither the wisdom nor the insight into themselves and their own limitations and faults to be able to advise anyone on anything. Yet they are full of hubris. Dealing with them has put me off religion for life.

The family also weaponise forgiveness so that the victims of abuse who want accountability are the problem in the family not abusers nor the enablers of abuse, it is all a crock as far as I am concerned.

I think the OPs question was genuine. Surely it's right to ask questions rather than make assumptions